Long time listener, First time caller
by theriversoul
Summary: It’s three weeks into their first term at Starfleet and Kirk isn’t quite sure why McCoy lets him hang around her still. He’s pretty sure it’s probably because he was the only one to help her off the transport ship, half-covered in vomit. girl!Bones/Kirk


**Rating:** PG-13 (For language and mentions of some sexing)  
**Characters:** girl!Bones/Kirk (In this verse, Bones has ALWAYS been a girl)  
**Summary:** _It's three weeks into their first term at Starfleet and Kirk isn't quite sure why McCoy lets him hang around her still. He's pretty sure it's probably because he was the only one to help her off the transport ship, half-covered in vomit. He can't be sure though._  
**Authors Note:** This is for **jazmin22** because she's been such an awesome beta for me. Hope you enjoy this Jasmine!

* * *

She's not his type.

Which, in itself, sounds weird to him because she fills his two normal requirements; being alive and female. When he looks at her though, there's the absence of that usual urge, the one that typically gets him a drink in the face or a concussion or two. He watches her tussle with the stern, older officer who'd eyed him disapprovingly when he'd boarded earlier, still smelling like booze and covered in blood.

After a moment, when it looks like things might actually get interesting, the girl relents, voice raising a pitch higher then Jim thinks is humanly possible, before she lets the woman shove her into the seat beside him. She huffs loudly, lips pursing a little at being manhandled. There's a momentary struggle between her and the straps to her seat before she finally realizes she's got an audience beside her.

Kirk smiles, despite the way she regards him like something she's found on the bottom of her shoe. "Would you like some help?" he offers because it seems like the right thing to do.

"No," she says and her voice is sharp but not entirely directed at him. After another moment she finally gets all the buckles into place. Then she falls still, for about five seconds, before she starts to fidget again. Her knees are bouncing and he can feel the thin metal beneath their feet rattle. Her hands are twisting in her lap and she's got a part of her lips between her teeth.

"I might throw up on you," she says suddenly, looking at him again. The self-assuredness behind that claim makes Kirk twitch in his seat a little. He's been thrown up on before, sure, but they're in an enclosed space with about twenty other people.

"Uh," he starts, a little taken back. "I think these things are pretty safe, Starfleet's been using this model for years."

Kirk might have called the look she gave him cute by the way her nose scrunched up if it weren't for the impending possibility of her vomiting on him in the near future.

"Don't pander to me," she says but there's not so much menace behind it as underlying nervousness that Kirk understands a little. "There are ten hundred ways to die onboard this ship, on any ship. Have you ever thought about death by explosive decompression? It's not pretty. Space isn't beautiful, it's disease and danger, wrapped up in darkness and silence."

"You realize Starfleet operates in space."

"Yes, well," she started, waving her hand at him vaguely like she's got some great excuse ready but she falls silent instead after a moment. Kirk almost feels a little sorry for her, looking at the way her knuckles are white against her grip on the armrest. A moment passes between them and he thinks she might actually be quiet, still again but-

"What the hell happened to your face?" she asks, finally seeming to look at him fully.

"Got into a fight.," he says, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.

"With what? A 2 by 4?" she asks, surveying the damage to his face critically.

"No," Kirk says. "With them.," he tells her, pointing to the three men lined up in the seats beside her, all wearing the same expression of intense dislike. Jim smiles at them, and wiggles his fingers a little. The biggest of the three and one closest to her, looks he might lunge out of his seat at any moment but thankfully the ship rumbles to life below them, metal trembling briefly, before he can. A deafening hum is building and Jim's grin grows as they lurch forward, into the sky. He continues his smirk until a sound, high pitched and desperate, turns his attention back to the girl at his side.

Her face is white, lips pale and pressed tightly together. Her eyes are closed and while Kirk's no medical doctor, he thinks she look pretty green. When she opens her eyes they share a moment of panicked recognition before she turns promptly and vomits all over one of the cadets from the bar last night who made the unfortunate decision to sit beside her.

Kirk likes her already.

-

It's three weeks into their first term at Starfleet and Kirk isn't quite sure why McCoy lets him hang around her still. All he seems to do is exasperate her but she doesn't tell him to go away. He likes to think she genuinely likes him or maybe it's his charming personality. He's pretty sure it's probably because he was the only one to help her off the transport ship, half-covered in vomit. He can't be sure though.

"Jim," she says from beside him, without looking up, "Stop staring."

"I'm not staring," he tells her, breaking his gaze just long enough to steal an uneaten fry from her tray, "just enjoying a prolonged gaze in a certain direction."

"Really?" she asks, looking up from the medical textbook in front of her. "That's what you're going with?"

"Yeah," he says, half heartedly listening to her. He's trying to figure out who exactly Uhura is talking to. He's a professor; that much Kirk can tell from the dark charcoal grey of his uniform. Whoever he is, he has Uhura's full attention. Kirk watches the animated splay of her hands in front of her as she speaks and despite the fact that her companion's shoulders are stiff and formal Uhura is smiling widely.

"I don't get your obsession with her," McCoy says. There's no jealously in her remark, just bemusement.

"She rejected me."

"A lot of women reject you, Jim."

The corner of Kirk's mouth twitches upward just a little., "Yeah, but she did it so well."

-

Beyond the basic cadet courses everyone is forced to suffer through, they don't share that many classes together. McCoy spends most of her time at the hospital, and taking classes with complicated names that Jim never gets out right. It's strangely easy to fall into a routine though, late dinners and morning runs. It's a novelty for him at first, having a female friend. He doesn't really expect it to last, figures she'll get tired or he will but the weeks trickle by and she's still….there.

He decides it must be like having an older sister that's convinced you're a complete idiot. She's totally honest with him, sharp tongue ready to tell him when he's messed up but she's ready to help, too. He finds he likes the way she remains constantly unimpressed with him in general. It's…refreshing.

"Son of a bitch! Goddamn it, Jim!" she says suddenly, swearing from the other room, apparently just now noticing the sculpture he'd made her earlier in the night out of her spare bandages.

Mostly he just likes how easy it is to annoy her.

-

"You look like shit," she says, with that disappointed, judgmental look that she's got practiced by now, when he shows up at her dormitory, drunk and bleeding. She's wearing some sort of oversized t-shirt and he stares at her purple socks, head cocked to the side, until she leads him further into her room. Her hands are cool against his brow and the medical scanner she gets from her bag beeps quietly as she frowns, tucking her lower lip inside her mouth. He wonders where her roommate is. "You're going to need stitches…again," she says with a sigh and disappears into her bathroom, returning with a small red kit he's become increasingly familiar with.

Her bedding looks rumpled, slept in but she's too alert to have been sleeping. It takes him a moment to find the open book, turned over carefully at the end of her bed. "Reading in bed on a Friday night?" he slurs to her, "This is why you couldn't come out tonight?"

"I can do this without local anesthesia, if you like."

"Reading is sexy," he tells her immediately and is rewarded with a barely noticeable quirk of her lips upward as she rubs something cool and soft across her brow before beginning.

"Now stay still," she tells him, fighting a smile.

-

She doesn't come out often with him, not that he can blame her given the amount of weekends he's shown up at her door beat to hell, but the semester is over and she's warn out her excuses. Most of their cadet class is out, drunk and exuberant and they're both no exception. McCoy is taking animatedly with his date, a blonde whose name he remembered a few shot of tequila ago but is now drawing a blank. "Oh my God," his date says, jumping up abruptly. "This is my favorite song," she tells the table, reaching across the table for Kirk's arm to pull him onto the dance floor. McCoy quirks an eyebrow at him in a drunken parody that he recognizes as her judgmental face but he flashes her one of those shit-eating grins he knows she hates, disappearing into the crowd, before she can make a comment.

When Kirk looks back a few minutes later, McCoy's at the bar, chatting it up with a local, one of those offshore drillers from the looks of him. She's smiling, pale cheeks bright red with alcohol, leaning in to hear whatever it is he has to say. Kirk loses sight of her when his date pulls him further into the crowd and he forgets about her completely when the blonde catches his bottom lip between her white teeth and presses herself up again him.

When the song is over and his date takes him back to the table, falling into conversation with her friends about something Kirk doesn't quite catch, McCoy is nowhere to be found. It takes him a moment to locate her at the end of the bar. He misses whatever happened first, just catches her voice above all the others., "Back off, buddy." Kirk recognizes that tone and winces a little. He'd been on the receiving end more than once.

By the time he gets to them, the local is reaching out for her ass, again, judging by the enraged look she wears. McCoy tosses his drink on him a second later, face red with anger now. Her suitor's smile fades.

"Bitch," he barks out, moves forward but Kirk is faster, lays him flat out on the floor before he can reach for McCoy. The guy struggles upward, too drunk for a real fight but Kirk doesn't count on his buddies, a little more sober and a little bigger to come to his aid. Kirk goes down quick, two against one, swallowing his own blood reflexively as he struggles to the standing position again. He's half way up when he catches a punch to the gut and kick to back. He's barely hauled himself up again, half on the table when he hears the smash of glass and an echoing thud.

When he looks up, there's a nameless cadet from Starfleet holding one of the guys in a chokehold, and McCoy's holding a broken beer bottle in one hand, the other guy on the floor in front of her. She sets the broken beer bottle on the bar, makes a beeline for him, angrier than Kirk's seen her before. He's on his feet again by the time she gets there, grinning. "That was fucking badass, Bones," he slurs out before she punches him, surprisingly hard. He stumbles backwards but she grabs him before he goes down again, fingers digging into the fleshly part of his upper arm as she drags him out of the bar.

No one spares them a second glance when they show up at the office she shares with the other interns at the hospital a little after midnight. They're probably used to her bringing him in, needing more medical attention then she can give him with her little red bag. He sways dangerously on his feet before she helps him sit down.

McCoy stitches him up in silence and wraps his fractured rib with a little more force than necessary. She won't quite look at him and she doesn't talk to him, even when he tries to drunkenly engage her in conversation. She's fuming, silently, under that calm face. When they're finished she drives them both home, drops him off with a handful of pills and a doctors appointment that he'll miss, too hung over to make, in the morning.

He gives her about three days to cool down before he shows up the hospital during her rounds. He flirts with one of the brunette nurses, gets her phone number before McCoy shows up to his page. He sends her a brilliant smile when she sees him, as much as he can manage anyway with his face beat to hell. "I brought those tacos you love," he says, shaking the greasy bag in his left hand. There's a barely perceivable tightening at the corner of her mouth and uplift of her eyebrows. She takes the bag wordlessly and he trails after her, sending the nurse a wink over his shoulder before disappearing behind the corner.

McCoy eats mostly in silence but Kirk talks to her anyway until she's finished. Then he's silent and she looks up, lips pursed. "Goddamn it, Jim," her voice is quiet in the cafeteria but the intensity behind her words is unmistakable., "I had it covered."

"I thought-" he starts.

"No, you didn't think, Jim, and that's the problem. You can't solve everything with your fists."

"I was trying to help you."

"Don't use me as an excuse.," and then, softer, "Thank you." For a second Kirk thinks she might actually cry and he looks around, a little desperate but then she straightens a little and it passes. "Fighting isn't always the answer. You're going to have to figure that out one day, if you ever want to be captain."

"I know," Kirk admits. A moment of thoughtful silence passes between them before he speaks again. "I still can't believe you hit a guy over the head with a beer bottle!" he grins at her, "I'm totally bringing you to my next bar fight."

"Jesus, Jim," McCoy says laughter in her voice, "You're incorrigible."

"I do try," he tells her, accepting the gentle punch to the arm she gave him as they stood.

-

She starts dating an EMT at the hospital at beginning of their second year. Kirk thinks he's an uptight jackass but McCoy seems to really like him. She gives off that impression anyway because she never stops talking about the guy. It's annoying, really, and he while he wouldn't admit it to her face, he starts to miss her company when she cancels their dinner nights and isn't there at 3am to stitch him. Eventually he finds other ways to keep busy, after all it is the start of a new year and there's a fresh class of cadets to keep him entertained. Everything seems to be going pretty well for Bones for a few months before she shows up at his dorm room a sobbing mess. She looks awful, make up running down her face with her dark hair a wild mess.

Kirk hugs her awkwardly and has no idea what to say so he offers her a drink, heavy with vodka. She chokes it back with a cough and calms a little. He looks at the clock behind her, ticking away and thinks about the date he had with the blonde from his Theory of Wrap class an hour ago in the quad. He forgets about her by the time McCoy's finished telling him what happened, too preoccupied with the desire to punch something, or break the kid's neck. Maybe both, but McCoy makes him promise not to do anything.

"Of course not, Bones," he lies. "What do you take me for?" he asks and it's a testament, Kirk thinks, to just how drunk or upset she is that she accepts his words at face value. He waits until she passes out, leaving her alone in his bed, snoring and drooling a little into his pillow. When he comes back a few hours later with skinned knuckles he has a bag of greasy breakfast tacos and two coffees; face the picture of innocence.

-

"Goddamn it, Jim, just sit down," Bones says, sparing him a brief, annoyed glance up from the paper she was reading. He throws her a face she doesn't see before finally sitting down with a loud, angry huff beside her. When she finishes reading a few minute later, she folds the paper back neatly into the envelope he'd handed it to her in.

"Well?" he asks, "What does it mean?"

"They think you cheated somehow, during the simulation. They're holding a hearing tomorrow to decide."

"And?"

"Did you?"

"Bones! What? No." He paused. "Not really.," and then after a moment, "strictly speaking anyway. Now don't go looking at me like that," he tells her, pulling her hands away from where they were cradling her exasperated face. "It can't be that bad. I mean…I beat the test, didn't I?" he asks, grinning.

-

"Who the hell was that?" Kirk asks, watching the pointy-eared alien disappear into the crowd of students moving hurriedly out of the amphitheatre.

"I don't know," McCoy says, eyes glittering as she followed his progress, "but he's hot."

"You enjoyed that," Kirk accuses, noting her expression.

"What? You mean watching you get taken down a peg or two? Well," Bones admits with a half shrug and big grin, "maybe a little."

-

She's got that look on her face, the one he usually gets when he shows up at her door, a drunken, bloody mess at 2am. It stings, more then he'd care to admit, when she sides with Spock. She won't quite look him in the face after that and for a moment he feels a stab of guilt for putting in her on the spot, for putting her in such a position but it passes, overwhelmed by what's at stake. They have to go back, for Pike and for the Earth.

She'll understand.

When he comes back with Pike in tow, she's waiting in the transporter room with Nurse Chapel and a few others. She doesn't look him in the eye but he watches her body language, the stiff set of her shoulders and quick, efficient movement of her hands over Pike while the scanner beeps. "I want him prepped for surgery," she tells the gaggle of nurses waiting behind her before helping them get Pike onto a gurney and wheeled out of the transporter room.

Her eyes go to Spock next who is leaning heavily on Lt. Uhura which Kirk's still having some trouble with but he realizes, as Bones raises her voice, "I don't care if you're the goddamn Virgin Mary, Spock, you're getting a full check up," now's not the time to address the troubling turn of events. Her eyes fall on him last, sweeping over him harshly as she moves the scanner. "Chapel," she barks, "I want him in Bay 2, full work up and if he gives you any trouble give him a sedative."

"Bones, wait," Kirk calls out but she's already through the doors, yelling orders about Pike's surgery and uncooperative patients.

-

When Kirk wakes in the infirmary, hours later, he's all bandaged up and tucked neatly into one of the standard issued beds. His whole face aches and every time he sucks in a pained breath his sides burn. He can't quite remember how many ribs were broken because half way through counting, Chapel lost patience with him and his last smart ass remark about the hyposray she was using, _Really jam it in there this time, ok? _The sedative she gave him after, he thinks as he tries to sit up unsuccessfully, the world blacking out momentarily from pain, must be wearing off. It takes him ten minutes to successfully maneuver the straw from his water to his mouth before McCoy finally shows up. She looks tired and sweaty. She's got deep indentations on her face from her surgical mask and goggles.

"How's Pike?" he asks quietly.

"Good, we got the parasite out without too much damage to his spinal cord. He'll need a lot of physical therapy," she says, face wrinkled with concentration. Kirk knows at once that she's disappointed it didn't go better.

"You did a good job, Bones," he says, trying to put his water back. Eventually McCoy takes it out of his hands and sets it carefully on the bed beside the table.

"Jim," Bones starts and the tone of her voice makes Kirk look up sharply. Her bottom lip trembles. Shit.

"I mean, it's not like saving Earth," he starts, interrupting her before she can start crying because he's not entirely sure he can handle watching her lose it right now, "and the federation from a balding crazy Romulan, but I think you should be proud." The grin he gives her is lopsided, inhibited by his almost black eye and cut upper lip.

"Stop it, Jim. Just stop it," she says, voice low, shaking. "It's not funny, you almost died"

"Why are you so upset? Jesus, Bones, I'm alive."

"Because I love you, you giant idiot," she blurts out, voice rising shrilly.

"Huh," is all Kirk can manage, stunned for perhaps the first time ever, into silence. Over her left shoulder he can see the rest of the infirmary frozen in disbelief before nurses who value their career in Starfleet and patients who value their lives, turn away form the scene unfolding before them.

When Kirk looks back at Bones her face is bright red and he's pretty sure he's supposed to say something now. Something like _I love you, too _or maybe if his whole body wasn't burning in agony, he could stand up and sweep her off her feet with a kiss. Neither of them seems entirely possible at the moment so he settles on, "Really?"

Which, in retrospect, given the entire Standard language at his disposal and the way Bones had bolted from his bedside, really wasn't the best choice of words.

-

It takes two days of planning before he's able to orchestrate a successful escape from sickbay. Nurse Chapel catches him the first time and he'd barely been back in the bed before she jammed another hypospray into his neck. When he finally does get free and makes it into an empty turbo lift that'll take him down to the officer quarters, he tries to work out what to say. He gets through ten variations of the same thing by the time he makes his way to her door. He still has no idea what the best terms to say are.

When she answers, the expression on her face a cross of grief and hope, Kirk forgets about words entirely and kisses her instead.


End file.
